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I crawled out of the sea like some graceless water creature, unused to the air and hard sand.
In one fist, I gripped Nemea’s sword. On the opposite arm, looped around it like an overlarge shackle, was his crown. I’d been delirious with pain and exhaustion, floating over the sea’s surface and through the remnants of the battle, slipping in and out of consciousness for the whole of the night. There had been no deciphering between dream and reality as bits of soldiers’ bodies bobbed on the water beside me. Ship flotsam mingled with the blood-laced foam.
It had been a strain to keep my power focused, as that spell seemed to have reduced me to almost nothing. The taste of it still sat on my tongue, an incessant hunger for more pulsing through me with each thump of my sore heart. My senses had been dulled by the fierce, terrible pain in my middle, and yet, I’d managed to force the sea to ferry me across its surface. All the while, I’d clung to the sword and crown like the dented pieces of metal were what kept me afloat. They were imbued now, anointed with Nemea’s blood. When I touched them, I remembered that I had slain a monster.
I remembered that I could do it again.
Shaking, and on all fours, I paused at the edge of the waves and looked up the dune.
The white sand rolled gently, creased by the wind, and I realized the sea had spat me out onto the very beach where Halla had performed her offering to Eusia. Where I had choked on the draught that had severed my bond to Theodore. I could make out the stairs that led to the flower garden, where the pain had brought me to my knees and blotted out my vision. The pale walls and turrets of Genevreer Palace loomed beyond in an endless, mocking sprawl.
I lay slowly onto my side and let out a sob at the flare of pain in my stomach. I could hardly stand, let alone reach the palace, traverse its halls.
“Your house is too big, Theo,” I mumbled to myself, sounding half dead.
Perhaps I was.
The moldering, sea-filled hole in my middle throbbed like a heartbeat, carrying pain from my tender scalp to my wet toes. It pounded in my lips, in my fingers, and all I wanted was to sleep on the warm sand. I closed my eyes, only to have my thoughts flicker and distort like images from a violent fever-dream. I imagined the empress on her swaying ship, and Eusia in her little pool of dark water, and Halla, warm and safe with Theodore in the palace above me. I imagined Agatha’s halo of dark curls, her wide, shining brown eyes, and there was fear in them.
A thin whimper filled my throat. Agatha, who never seemed to fear or fumble. Who was made of steely resolve. Agatha, who had given me years and years of stalwart care and friendship. Who’d done so much to ensure I would never be alone or afraid.
“Get up,” I said, the words sharp air through my teeth, “get up, get up, get up.”
With pain licking at me like wildfire, I pushed myself back up onto all fours. I knew, even as I dragged myself—and my damned sword and crown—over the sand, toward the garden stairs, that I wouldn’t be welcomed back on palace grounds. I’d threatened the safety of the Varian kingdom in more ways than one. I’d gleefully choked Chancellor Eftan in farewell. But I was too unwell to enact my plan alone, and there was only one person in the palace who cared for Agatha the way that I did.
The sun beat against my back, and still, my skin stippled from a deep, penetrating cold. I reached the base of the stairs. Though my arms shook, I lifted Nemea’s sword, and brought it down against the wooden treads with a loud clang. I did it again. And again. Tears slid down my cheeks, over my pinched lips, but finally a gold-armored soldier appeared at the top landing.
He squinted down at me. “Oy! You all right?”
In answer, the sword clattered from my hold. I collapsed fully against the wood. “I need Commander Mela.” The words were hardly loud enough to reach him.
His boots thudded his descent. Once on the tread that my head rested upon, he squatted to inspect me, then reared back with recognition—with fear. “Ahh shit.”
“I won’t hurt you.” My voice rasped, ugly and thin.
He reached out and plucked Nemea’s sword from where it had fallen. Then, he slipped the crown from its place around my limp arm. My resistance was delayed—a weak jerk and a curl of my lip.
A grave note colored his voice. “Right, but I won’t be takin’ you at your word.” He coughed in discomfort. “Sorry, Your Majesty.”
There came the rattling of a chain. Fingers gripped my forearm. The biting cold of metal enveloped my wrists and squeezed and squeezed.
The sun shone behind him, and I squinted, trying to see him better. I’d not expected to be welcomed, but a nick of surprise cut through me anyway. I couldn’t ignore its sting, nor the question that accompanied it: Did Theodore order this?
I opened my mouth to ask, but the guard rose and started back up the stairs with my sword and crown in his fist. An incoherent protest shook up my throat. My arms wobbled as I tried to push myself up, to crawl to the next stair, but pain spread through my stomach in a shocking burst. My limbs gave out. I laid my cheek once more on the warm, smooth wood, and the afternoon light dimmed to black.
I woke to the sound of more boots. Boots, and clanging armor, and murmuring voices. My senses rushed with the cutting sun rays, with the warm air perfumed with the scent of Theodore’s flowering vines. The stairs I lay upon ached against my body, and my wrists were heavy with the manacles that guard had locked around them.
“Lachlan,” I said on a jagged, searching sob. My head sat in a fog. My vision was bleary. “I need to see Commander Mela. Please. Not the king. I need Lach—”
Something bit into my shoulder. I squinted up at a handful of armored soldiers, swords drawn and poised on me. One of them spoke, though I was too beset to decipher which. “We’re ordered to run you through without trial if you use your power.”
My heart struck my ribs. “Who ordered tha—”
“She’s supposed to go straight to the prison tower, isn’t she?” asked another soldier, cutting me off.
“No. Please,” I managed, “I need… I need to tell Lachlan about his wife.”
“Mela doesn’t have a wife.”
My mind, my tongue, could not find and form words quickly enough. Chain rattling, I tried to twist, to sit myself up straighter, but a guard pi
A piercing screech tore up my throat. Some of the guards jolted and swore at the sound. I couldn’t comprehend how that pressure alone was enough to ignite a blaze of agony through the whole of my body. It sent panic through me. I was weaker, tremulous, when all I’d previously known was a body that had felt sturdy and capable.
You will only find relief in your king. The words Eusia had spoken to me scraped through my head, a provocation and a warning made one. Only the king will do.
The guard yanked his boot from me, more from fear, I guessed, than remorse or pity. Perhaps he thought whatever vile thing coursed through me might seep from my skin and creep into him. Then the group of soldiers was straightening, clearing their throats, making themselves look well disciplined and alert as descending footsteps sounded above me.
“Found her at the base of the stairs,” one of the guards said. “Do we carry ahead as usual? Not sure if royalty is treated differently from commoners in something like this, Commander.”
I lifted my head just in time to watch Lachlan lower himself to kneel beside me. Our gazes locked.
His mossy eyes were cold, his mouth sat at an unfriendly slant. He looked empty and worn. “Queen, commoner, and Goddess alike,” he said, voice bereft of its usual mischievous tone, “are all equal when it comes to the law.”
Fucking bastard. I let out an angry breath and fought to hold up my manacled wrists. “Unchain me.”
He ignored my words. “You look like a living corpse, Imogen.”
“Lach.” His name came out as a squeak. “What are you doing?”
“My job.” At my look, he stood and loomed. “You’ve been proscribed.”
I didn’t know that word or its implication. I shook my head, frantically sca
Lachlan spoke to me slow and clear. “You’ve been condemned and ba
“Who did I entrap—”
“The king.”
“That’s not—Lachlan, you were there. You know the truth…”
His lips twitched. “Help her stand,” he said to the two guards nearest me. As they hauled me up with hard hands, another cry shredded my throat. Lachlan scowled, and I searched for any concern in his flattened gaze. When I didn’t find it, my chest hollowed out. “We have testimony that you ordered the murder of the captain of the Hercule, that you stowed away and endangered a Varian warship in the midst of battle.”
A plummeting sensation took me as I remembered that captain’s death. The deep, gurgling wound in his gut, the putrid lures that I’d cast into his killers. Lures I couldn’t control. I used the soldiers’ hold on me to keep myself up. “I didn’t… I sank Serafi ships—I helped you win that battle.” I groaned through my clamped teeth. “I killed Nemea. His crown is mine.”
Lachlan’s eyes went round with the impact of my confession, but he said not a word.
“Who proscribed me?” I finally whispered, unable to keep the wobble of hurt from my voice. “Was it Theo? Or did you and Eftan force his hand?”
His throat moved as he swallowed. The moment stretched, thin and taut as a string. When he finally answered me, it was with a choked voice. “The king and his council are one and the same.”
I could only hold his unfeeling gaze, hoping to elicit some shame or remorse in him. Quickly, he flicked his eyes toward the top of the stairs, and the guards that held me turned me roughly. I spun like a cloth doll, loose and lolling, as they hauled me up to the flower garden. With each jostle I whimpered, barely able to keep my legs moving in step with theirs. At the top, they released me, and I fell to the soft grass in a tremoring heap.
Slowly, as the guards all filed in, and Lachlan came to stand before me, I sat myself back on my haunches. I went still, quiet. For a desperate moment, I thought to search for my power beneath the heavy shroud of pain. To send out a slew of lures at once and unchain myself.
The ti